How to keep from being overwhelmed in the digital age
Some of you might already have your own phone or computer. Or you might have a family that says you’re not ready yet. But sooner or later, all of you are going to be faced with TMI.
TMI? Too Much Information!
When I was your age, there were no mobile phones. (OK, that’s not completely true. In the TV Show Get Smart, Maxwell Smart had a phone in his shoe. But you know what I mean!)
When I was your age, computers filled entire rooms and only a very few people had personal computers at home.
But you are living in the Information Age, and so you’re faced with a problem I didn’t have. You’ve got stuff coming at you from all directions. More stuff is published every day on the Internet than was published on paper in a year in 1970. It’s crazy!
How can we follow it all?
Easy answer: We can’t. Don’t try.
That might sound like I’m being flippant, but really, I’m serious. Every person in this age needs to decide what’s important for them to know, and then we have to train ourselves to ignore the rest.
And given how much is out there, we can’t even follow all the information about things we actually care about.
There’s just too much!
Plan for staying sane:
- Remember that your devices don’t own you—you own them!
All devices can be turned off. All devices can be put away. If you’re really attached to yours, it might be hard, but work on it. Turn on Do Not Disturb when you’re doing something you want to do. Put it away in another room when you’re sleeping. - Decide what’s important to you.
This is really important in the Information Age. Although I’m one of those people who finds almost everything interesting (except football—sorry football fans!), I have to pick and choose. I simply can’t read and watch everything I’m interested in. - Turn off notifications.
Device notifications are so handy…and so distracting! Do you get a notification every time a newspaper posts a new story? Turn it off. Do you get a notification every time your favorite YouTuber posts? Turn it off! You really don’t need to know. You’ll seek out the information that’s important to you. - Learn how to use filters and get off email lists.
Your email app lets you create filters so that important mail is sorted from the junk. Learn how to use them! Also, make sure to click that “unsubscribe” button when you start getting email notifications you don’t want. [Click here to read my blog post about spam.] - Spend time IRL.
Maybe this is the most important thing of all. Don’t forget the real world! You’ll find beautiful nature, fun people, loving animals, great food, and endless IRL activities that don’t require a device.
You can even leave your phone at home.
